Recently I discovered the disconnect of using “ableism”. I feel like other words ending with -sit and -ism, not only is the word being devalue as it has become a political cliche; for an example racism and sexism in the overt sense has for the most part disappeared, however covert racism and sexism vis-a-vis internalized sexism (such as men stating they would rather have a male pilot over a female pilot, when flying despite female pilots having documented ability to handle stress if a plane crashes or looses control.)

I’ve discovered that ableism has been taken control by self-diagnosed people (wether it’s autism or other mental disorders) that see overt sexism (slurs, headlines that have negative condonations of disabilities) vs people who have higher functioning, but profound challenges with outdated “labels”.

I feel that given my complexities, I also have seen ableism, but I cannot use that word, because the self-diagnosed, #actuallyautistic types. that supports selective autistic people; use their identity to one-up or own-the-ableists, but will refuse to accept the harsh reality of people who chronic “invisible” disabilities and how people with physical disabilities are favored over the invisible.

Of course the rhetoric would be “well we can’t single people out” but we can do it implicitly.

The way to remember it…

People who are self-diagnosed in recent years, see overt negative messaging on disabilities, but the ones who have been clinically diagnosed over a generation ago, see the implicit, the unwritten or the unsaid part of ableism, but is intelligent enough to not to use that phrase unless it can be justified. Most often the overt ablism is just heresy.